Bill Owens (photographer)

Owens was born in San Jose, California and raised on a farm in Citrus Heights.{{cite news|first1=Jeffrey|last1=Kastner|accessdate=2019-12-24|title=Art/Architecture; A Vision of Suburban Bliss Edged With Irony|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/19/books/art-architecture-a-vision-of-suburban-bliss-edged-with-irony.html|newspaper=The New York Times|date=19 March 2000|issn=0362-4331|via=NYTimes.com}} He studied visual anthropology at San Francisco State College,{{cite news|first1=Benjamin|last1=Genocchio|accessdate=2019-12-24|title=The Soul of Suburbia, Captured on Film|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/13artsli.html|newspaper=The New York Times|date=13 January 2008|issn=0362-4331|via=NYTimes.com}} dropped out and went on an around-the-world hitchhiking trip before finishing his education at Chico State College. He served in the Peace Corps in Jamaica and, upon returning to the USA, lived and worked in the town of Livermore in the San Francisco Bay Area, as a staff photographer for a local newspaper.

In 1973, Owens released the book Suburbia, whose pictures showed American suburban life in Livermore.{{cite news|first1=Kate|last1=Abbott|accessdate=2019-12-24|title=Bill Owens' best photograph: a 1970s Tupperware party on thick shagpile|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/27/bill-owens-best-photograph-tupperware-party-1970s-california|newspaper=The Guardian|date=27 May 2015|issn=0261-3077|via=www.theguardian.com}} The Los Angeles Times commented that the book "rouses pity, contempt, laughter, and self-recognition. Owens’s influence was immense during the 1970s, especially with respect to the kind of portraiture that shows the middle class." In 2001, Suburbia was included in Andrew Roth’s The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century.

He has published other photography books, and his photographs have been exhibited internationally and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, San Jose Museum of Art and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.{{citation needed|date=December 2019}}

Owens went on to become a well-known beer brewer and publisher of American Brewer magazine.{{cite news|first1=Roberta|last1=Smith|accessdate=2019-12-24|title=Art in Review; Bill Owens -- 'Suburban Folk Tales'|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/12/arts/art-in-review-bill-owens-suburban-folk-tales.html|newspaper=The New York Times|date=12 November 1999|issn=0362-4331|via=NYTimes.com}} He founded Buffalo Bill's Brewery in Hayward in 1983, one of the first brewpubs to open in California since prohibition. In 2003, he founded the American Distilling Institute, a professional membership organization, and publishing house "to promote and defend the art and enterprise of craft distilling."{{cite web|title=About American Distilling Institute|url=http://distilling.com/about-adi|website=American Distilling Institute|accessdate=9 February 2015}} As the president of ADI, Owens has become one of the leading spokesmen of the craft distilling movement.{{cite news|last1=Garbee|first1=Jenn|title=Q&A With Bill Owens: The American Distilling Institute Founder's Cross-Country Road Trip, Industry Trends + His Favorite Spirit Stops|url=http://www.laweekly.com/restaurants/q-and-a-with-bill-owens-the-american-distilling-institute-founders-cross-country-road-trip-industry-trends-his-favorite-spirit-stops-2374825|accessdate=9 February 2015|publisher=LA Weekly|date=28 August 2012}}

• Suburbia. San Francisco: Straight Arrow, 1973. {{ISBN|9780879320430}}, {{ISBN|9780879320423}}
• Suburbia. Revised and augmented. New York: Fotofolio, 1999. {{ISBN|1-881270-40-8}}.
• Our Kind of People: American Groups and Rituals. 1975. {{ISBN|978-0-87932-084-3}}, {{ISBN|978-0-87932-085-0}}.
• Working: I Do It for the Money. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977. {{ISBN|978-0-671-22820-0}}, {{ISBN|978-0-671-22782-1}}
• Working. Revised and augmented. New York: Fotofolio, 2009. {{ISBN|9781584181255}}.
• Documentary Photography: A Personal View. Danbury, New Hampshire: Addison House, 1978. {{ISBN|9780891690375}}.
• Publish Your Own Photo Book. Livermore, California: Morgan & Morgan, 1979. {{ISBN|978-0960246205}}
• How to Build a Small Brewery: Draft Beer in Ten Days. 1982. {{ISBN|978-0960246274}}.
• Leisure. New York: Fotofolio, 2005. {{ISBN|1-58418-074-9}}.
• Bill Owens. Anthology. Bologna: Damiani, 2008. By Claudia Zanfi, with an introduction by A. M. Homes and photographs and afterword by Owens. {{ISBN| 9788862080170}}.
• Craft of Whiskey Distilling. Hayward, California: American Distilling Institute, 2008. {{OCLC|1043326099}}.
• Craft of Whiskey Distilling. Revised edition. Hayward, California: American Distilling Institute, 2013. {{ISBN|9780982405512}}
• The Village: Bill Owens – Jamaica Peace Corps Photographs 1964–66. True North, 2014. Edited by Geir Jordahl, Kate Jordahl, and John Thacker. With an introduction by Victoria Sheridan and an afterword by Geir Jordahl. {{ISBN|978-0-9899915-1-3}}.
• The Nano Distillery: The Future of Distilling. Hayward, California: White Mule, 2018. {{ISBN|9781732235403}}.
• Cars: A Completely American Reality. Bellingham, Washington: True North, 2012. {{ISBN|9781943013234}}.
• Altamont to America: Bill Owens and the Legacy of Suburbia: Photographs 1964–2020. Bellingham, Washington: True North, 2018. {{ISBN|9781943013166}}
• Altamont 1969. Bologna: Damiani, 2019. {{ISBN|9788862086233}}.

• 1976: Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation{{Cite web |url=http://www.gf.org/76fellow.html |title=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 1976 Fellows Page |access-date=2006-12-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061209131746/http://www.gf.org/76fellow.html |archive-date=2006-12-09 |url-status=dead }}
• Two National Endowment for the Arts Grants.

• San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA. A retrospective

{{reflist}}

• The Washington Post: "The American Dream, Circa 1970: Suburbia Photographs Capture How Much We've Changed", by Frank Ahrens, March 24, 2000
• The New York Times: "A Vision of Suburban Bliss Edged With Irony" by Jeffrey Kastner, March 19, 2000
• Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Bill Owens' Unrelenting Eye Defines a Generation", April 9, 1999

• {{Official website|Billowens.com}}

{{Hayward, California}}

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Category:American brewers

Category:American photojournalists

Category:Journalists from California

Category:Artists from San Jose, California

Category:People from Hayward, California

Category:People from Livermore, California

Category:Living people

Category:1938 births